Tag Archives: myth
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Zemeckis’ Beowulf

I couldn’t help but be struck by the interesting re-telling of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, by Robert Zemeckis, Neil Gaiman, and Roger Avary. They kept the basic story intact, but added a twist with Grendel’s mother and more subtle characters. In fact, the theme of fatherhood in the time of heroes was nicely problematized: the [...]

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The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of [...]

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The Epic Hero

The epic hero has a double role. He (there are no epical woman heroes as far as I know) is an individual person with an habitual virtue from which his exploits flow, and he is representative of the group to whom the exploit is important. Since the performance of the exploit is important because of [...]

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Archaic Torso of Apollo

We have no idea what his fantastic headwas like, where the eyeballs were slowly swelling. Buthis body now is glowing like a gas lamp,whose inner eyes, only turned down a little,
hold their flame, shine. If there weren’t light, the curveof the breast wouldn’t blind you, and in the swerveof the thighs a smile wouldn’t keep [...]

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